MMT50 - 240

Meeting Malkmus - a Pavement podcast

jD is back and this week he is joined by Cam from Toronto to discuss his Pavement origin story, talk about indie music and of course to break down song number 40 in the countdown.

Transcript:

Track 2:

[0:00] Previously on the Pavement Top 50. This is the second song from Terra Twilight on the countdown.

You Are a Light was number 45.

And here we are at number 41 with Major Leagues. Pete, what do you think?

So I love this song. I was talking earlier about the early days of me discovering Pavement and those burned MP3 CDs.

And I always loved this song. I mean, this song was the soundtrack to breakups and heartaches and lonely times.

Track 3:

[0:40] Hey, this is Westy from the Rock and Roll Band Pavement, and you're listening to The Countdown.

Track 4:

[0:49] Hey, it's JD here, back for another episode of our Top 50 Countdown for Seminole Indie Rock Band Pavement.

Week over week, we're going to count down the 50 essential Pavement tracks that you selected with your very own top 20 ballots.

I then tabulated the results using an abacus and, strangely, a wizard's hat.

All that's left for us is to reveal this week's track.

How will your favorite song fare in the ranking? You'll need to tune in, or whatever the podcast equivalent of tuning in is, every week to find out. So there's that.

This week, we're joined by Pavement superfan, Cam in Toronto. Cam, how are you doing?

I'm good JD how are you thank you so much for having me on I'm you know I'm the better part of good we've had some technical snafus here and we're working through it so yeah I'll beI'll be fine but enough about me let's get into you and find out your pavement origin story.

[1:46] So my pavement origin story, and I was just saying off mic that I've been on many podcasts over the years, but I've never had a chance to talk about pavement in long form.

So this is quite the treat. um so yeah my origin story pavement goes back to high school um so with me i mean you can really extrapolate to my kind of like what i'll just call my coolmusic um origin story that i i think for me really started in i'd say like the fall of 1994 and i always credit um major league baseball going on strike in 1994 you know as my sliding doorsmoment where maybe I would have never even cared about pavement if that didn't happen I was because I guess in that fall I think I just entered grade 11 and I was mainly just like a hugesports nerd so all I wanted to do was watch baseball and fancy baseball and NBA statistics and trading cards and like real advanced like like, sports nerdom.

And then Major League Baseball went on strike, and there's no World Series that year. And I was, like, heartbroken.

I needed something to fill my time.

[3:02] And I don't remember exactly why. It's like, I'm going to get really into music.

But I started listening to CFNY here in Toronto, where I grew up north of the city, and slowly started to get into, like, a lot of those, like, gateway bands.

Bands um so there's also the the post grunge crap that was on the radio i thought i should talk crap it's all like all that stuff so like you know stone temple pilots or you know a lot of thecan con bands appear that i still love but you know i would also hear some songs by like dinosaur junior or i'd be listening on the oliver press show and they play the pixies or i hear thebreeders so you know little by little then you get into those bands and then you discover of our Sonic Youth and it quickly led me to Pavement who never had any songs on the radio but Iquickly understood that this is a band you were supposed to like if you were cool um.

[4:01] And it's like Sonic Youth were definitely my first sort of favorite cool band in this post Major League Baseball strike phase.

And I still really like them, but I still to this day find them a little atonal.

Because at heart, I still love like Top 40 and like Pop Hooks and stuff.

So Papin were sort of the best version of sort of, you know, poppy, hooky songs, but still weird and noisy and kind of like snarky and whatnot.

So they sort of ticked a lot of boxes for me. And clearly those guys like classic rock, too.

But they also knew about, you know, the Swell Maps and the Tall Dwarves and the Clean and the Fall and all those bands that, again, you were supposed to like.

And I feel like to some degree I still pretend like I like a lot of bands.

Some of them are pretty bad.

But yeah, Pavement, I mean, is long time my favorite band.

And um i've been lucky because i actually got to i've seen them i guess in total four times um i did see them when they played lollapalooza in molson park and barry the sort of the.

[5:14] They say in the i'm sure you have the slow century dvd but i remember there's like a, clip of like scott kanberg or button astanovich maybe where he said that was the tour that killedthe touring version of Lollapalooza because it was so badly attended where Sonic Youth headlined and Papen played fourth.

So that was my first time seeing them. I don't think I had any of the albums.

That point because i guess that was a summer like wow he's that we came but i knew sort of, some of the songs and then i feel like by that fall 1995 i remember having slightly theiralbums were very expensive too they were like 20 each unlike sonic youth who's doing like their dgc reissues where you could get like daydream nation for 10 bucks but um crookedCrooked Rain would be $20.

So yeah, I definitely had Crooked Rain first. I remember getting it at Fairview Mall in Toronto on Boxing Day for like 20% off. Yeah, so it was good value.

And then I definitely had all the albums by the time I went to university, which was in 1996.

[6:23] So yeah, they were like Pavement, Sonic Youth, Master Junior, Pixies, And then some of the more OG alternative bands, you know, The Clash and The Cure.

That was sort of the bedrock of sort of my sort of fandom.

But yeah, my origin sort of pavement goes way back. So yeah, I saw them twice before they broke up.

Lollapalooza, then they played. Oh, no, I've seen them five times, actually.

Three times before they broke up and then the two reunions.

And yeah, they've always been with me. I've never really stopped listening to them.

And almost every other band I have phases where I'll go sometimes, I'll need a break of a few months or a few years.

But no, they've been consistent in my life for, God, I don't even know, around 30 years now.

That's crazy. That is crazy. Yeah.

[7:16] Yeah, they just celebrated the 35th anniversary of Slay Tracks, recording Slay Tracks on January 17th. So that was 35 years ago.

And that's when they kicked it off in earnest. I feel like, uh, yeah, they didn't really break till 94.

Yeah. Is that the one you got the Instagram shout out to the podcast from there? Yeah. Yeah.

That's huge. No, you were the one who pointed that out to me.

I was, I couldn't, I couldn't figure out why my Instagram was blowing up.

And, uh, you told me that and I looked at it and then it was like, oh yeah.

Yeah. Matador reposted it as well. Yeah. retweeted it as well.

I'm trying to think, because I had the Westing by Sexton and Musket that sort of collected all those really early gnarly stuff, which is great.

I don't know if those ever came out individually on CDs, or if they did, like they were real collector's items, and like the Drag City stuff, from what I recall. Because I never had the actualCDs.

Yeah, they were just on vinyl. I've got them hanging on my wall because I didn't have a turntable. I went out and collected them and uh, There they are. Very good. Demolition plot.Perfect Sound Forever. Yeah.

[8:36] Chaotic artwork that goes with all the tape and albums. Very haphazard.

Yeah, like haphazard. And like you said, gnarly sounds.

I prefer the more hooky, melodic stuff as well.

So tell me about the other couple times you saw them live before we carried on.

Yeah, so first time would have been Ninety Night Bob, Lollapalooza, playing alongside side sonic youth and hole and cypress hill they they played in the afternoon i remember, rememberthis show because uh shenaid o'connor uh rep or shout out to ridley funeral home as her friend tron might could say um was supposed to play but she was like pregnant so elastica, subbedfor her um yeah so that they played in the the afternoon i remember seeing a mosh pit like I didn't go down to the front of Molson Park but it's just sort of weird in hindsight because theywere touring Wowie Zowie, not really the most moshable tunes on that one.

[9:36] I almost think it was like it's half country music but they were they've been playing right between Elastica who are probably never more popular in North America.

[9:47] So right after Elastica and right before Cypress Hill who are real crowd pleasers with the oversized, Buddha on stage and like smoke billowing so I think you know Paper Wardefinitely set up to fail and again this was I think referenced in the Slow Century DVD so that was the first time, second time I saw them at the Phoenix Concert Theatre, here in TorontoYou saw them at the Phoenix?

Yeah so that was the Bright in the Corners tour that was a fun show.

I bet Yeah so I obviously they played most of bread in the corners and whatever else um and i remember they did an interview with the new music with sookie and lee on that tour i thinkit was malchus and steve west i want to say um and malchus is they were for some reason they were in a used car dealership, um for some reason i don't know if there was one close to thevenue and malchus had like very short hair at the time i remember because i had this on vhs because i watched them many times um but that that was a good show i remember being in aparking lot before and drinking uh bottles of samuel adams beer not having a bottle opener so we're sort of we weren't cool enough to do that sort of like pop top thing where you take liketwo bottles so we're trying to use the curb and like one of the bottles the neck of the bottle broke we were so poor we still drank it which is probably not a good idea.

[11:14] Um that was one of my memories do not drink from a broken bottle yeah don't do that it's a good way to sort of shred your uh esophagus or whatever uh but anyway live to tell uhbut yeah that was a good show and then the third time i saw them at uh the government no longer those crack beside the cool house in toronto um that was that was the funeral home yeahexactly that was the terror twilight tour um that one was less remarkable i mean i think they're already the rumors they were breaking up and they seemed like they were kind of mailing itin um at that point and seemed fairly disinterested um and definitely terror twilight still a good album but of the five full lengths easily my least favorite i would say um so yeah that wasthe fourth the third time fourth time was the reunion tour when it hit toronto they played it on the island uh which is very cool toronto island for your non-toronto listeners it's like uh thinkof it like central park but in a great lake i guess um so they played there like a package show with the broken social scene who else band of horses played beach house and somebody else iwant to say destroyer wow Wow, what a lineup. Yeah, so that was cool.

[12:40] I missed that. I was living in LA at the time. I missed that tour.

Did you see their first reunion tour? Did you see them?

Yeah, I saw them in Central Park. Central Park, okay. Well, the first time I saw them was in 2010 when they reunited.

I didn't become a fan until Terror of Twilight. So I was really late to the party.

Really late to the party. and then um saw them in central park and then on the most recent reunion tour i went to the uk and followed them and like went to like eight shows in the uk anduh went to portugal and saw them in porto and um saw them both shows in toronto and then saw them in la at the fonda so i don't know where did they play i've been there before it's likewhat type of venue were they at it was a big festival it was the primavera festival so it was like i don't know it well enough to tell you where it was but it was like yeah it was a big festivalground um gotcha i'm sure i'm sure they do other events there because it was a really cool space and it was a it was a good back went on back was on right before they went on and he waselectric and uh yeah they were work right yeah very very cool yeah did you drink a port while you're in porto.

[14:02] I did not. I'm not a port guy. Not a port guy, yeah.

But I did have the sardines, the big plate of sardines.

Absolutely, yeah. Portugal's fun. Only been there once, but I had a great time.

So yeah, I saw them on the most recent reunion tours, the fifth of five times at Massey Hall in Toronto the first night.

That's very cool you got to follow them around, because I know they were very conscious about mixing up the set lists.

Yeah yeah which is which is very cool um so that and then malchus solo i probably i don't know maybe like four times mainly at lee's palace um in toronto and then i did see scottcannenberg, live when he toured solo he played the horseshoe he's played solo a few times in toronto because i know he played the dakota tavern that's very very small and i believe heplayed here when he he was doing the preston school of industry um oh wow i would love yeah so but so yeah i saw canterbury i feel like it was right before covid he played with someguys and did a combination of his solo stuff and some pavement tunes i know he played like kennel district and a few other a few other jams and then i also feel like one of the times i sawsonic youth was when mark Mark Eibold was in the band.

I seem to remember seeing him during that iteration. Yeah. Like.

[15:31] Like that was around like the album rather ripped or something okay um from what i recall so i feel like i saw that um so yeah i've had the good fortune to see like pavement orpavement guys yeah pavement and jace um probably into the double digits i'm very feel very fortunate and then you know pavement proper five different times which is yeah i think therewas only one toronto show i didn't see they played that the place that's no longer around called the palladium um where was the palladium was like near main and danforth um i i feel likeit's a shelter now but it was a big for a few years and i remember i feel like on my blog i did like a infographic of all the bands who played the playdium is quite the array everyone frompavement to my bloody valentine played there there was like a hip-hop double bill like tripop quest and de la slow and they did sort of the native tongues package tour um i feel like thelemonheads might have played there.

[16:36] Again it was it was kind of right before i got into music and those shows probably would have been 19 plus so it wouldn't have been of eight but yeah i'm pretty sure that was theonly other time paven played um toronto and that would have been like the crooked rain tour um that's great Yeah.

So, yeah, in terms of like payment live and then try to get any other like anecdotes with them beyond just like buying all their stuff.

[17:04] They've got a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Coming out with a seven inch box set this year.

Yeah i'm i'm curious how long they'll keep this going this reunion because i believe because they do have like other shows coming do we say when we're recording this i feel like this issort of evergreen content so we probably shouldn't put it in time and place but you know we're in the early early days of 2024 and i know they have shows coming up i think in southamerica, um and elsewhere so i will be curious to see how long they keep this uh going uh this this this reunion tour because it i never got the vibe malchus was that into things likereunions but um i don't know this one it's gone longer than i anticipated and they're certainly hitting a lot of countries me too let me ask you this did you notice a big difference betweenthe first reunion and the second reunion like in terms of malchus's um i don't know his sort of behavior his attitude i guess i i think he seemed a bit more at peace with it the second time inin good spirits maybe i just caught him on a good night um because i i think he was always very.

[18:23] Indifferent wouldn't be the word but i feel like and from what i understood the other guys in the band were more into the idea of a reunion than he was because obviously as a soulartist he's been been quite prolific um oh my god i think i think there's more malchus and well there's definitely more malchus or malchus plus jicks albums than pavement um by a longshot now big time and he's been very consistent putting out but yeah he seemed in good good spirits and um, I don't know. It's interesting because when I saw them in Massey Hall and justseeing the crowd that was there and they did two nights of Massey Hall in Toronto that's you know, I'm trying to get that.

I feel like it holds 3,000 people. So that's like 6,000 people.

It almost felt more like they bridged over into classic rock somehow.

[19:15] Which I don't know if it's like a discovery thing because of Spotify where where it'd be interesting, I always like comparing, you know, look at Pavement on Spotify and then go tothat tab where it said, people who like this band also like these bands, and how that morphs over the years.

And then you have kind of curiosity, and there's a few bands of the Pavement ilk that have a situation like this, where Harness Your Hopes becomes this weird viral era sensation, whichit's a fine B-side, but I never gave it too much thought.

And i'm not sure i really need to hear it live but again here we are and i think that's their number one stream song on spotify i know duster jr had a track like that that for some reasonbecame a big viral hit in japan from the uh without a sound album so again strange times we're living in the street age absolutely um yeah i feel like pippen's done pretty well it's sort ofcrossing over into sort of the youth as much as any band of that era considering those Those guys, I think, are all close to 60, if not older at this point.

I've got a 12-year-old and a 14-year-old, and they both know Harness Your Hopes.

Like, beyond osmosis, like, from me, they know that song from TikTok.

And it's so bonkers to me. Yeah, it's so interesting.

[20:39] Just while we were working through our technical difficulties, I noticed Mary Weiss, the lead singer of the Shangri-Las, Laws just passed away.

Oh, shut up. Yeah. Which is, which is a shame, but it's like, there's a whole generation of kids will not know and probably won't care that this.

[20:57] Person saying probably their favorite tiktok hook that oh no no no that you've heard on a million rap songs a million tiktok videos sung by mary weiss lisa the shanker laws theywill not know they will not care it's a time we live in i feel like people's relationship with music is just so it's just different i don't think it's good or bad or i don't know i you know as muchas everyone i missed all dick in the good old days but it's also like things change all the time yeah um so harness your hopes tiktok hit sure why not why not it's like totally believable idon't know it's a it's a pavement anomaly so speaking of relationships with music uh what's your go-to record i i understand from your conversation that terror twilight is like number fifthuh number five with a bullet uh what's your what's your number one what's your what's your one you'll pick up on a on a day like like today and you might just want to listen to somemusic so you throw it on yeah i mean probably depending on what mood you catch me.

[22:03] I would say wowie zowie more often than not but the actual answer honestly is probably perfect rain i i feel like it's just because again i feel like i'm sort of a top 40 person at heartas much as i pretend not to be although i sort of love it all and i feel like that's sort of their closest as to doing a CCR record, famously.

Yes. And that's not an original thought. I feel like that was sort of a reference point that a lot of rock critics mentioned.

[22:30] It's work. Shout out Ridley Funeral Home. Yeah, exactly.

[22:36] So yeah, in terms of something to listen through, 1 through 12, Crooked Rain for sure.

But Wowie Dowie is just such a peculiar record.

Record and probably had i'd say either like grounded or father to a sister of thought or amongst my like favorite songs they're just so unique um the father to a sister of thought is amazingyeah i i feel like the only problem with that album it's a little long and there's a few tracks mainly like flux equals rad that i would just like skip over uh they're like, fairly annoying umsomewhere out there is a is a spiral stairs uh curated version of wowie zowie like he had a track listing that's the only record he didn't get to do the track listing but he had it as a 10 song a10 song album classic rock album is is what he called it interesting yeah because it's what yeah i feel like it's 16 tracks like the original 16.

[23:36] Or 18 yeah yeah yeah i think you're right it is 18 um you know it's got country music it's got like stuff that's sort of resembling krat rock it's got sort of just like throwaway dirgeslike the aforementioned flex equals rad um you know starts with a song we dance that's just like a really slow tempo song and a very atypical album opener um you know rattled by therush was the the first single, which I mainly recall.

I feel like Pave and fans don't like that song, generally, and famously was featured on Beavis and Butthead, where they said the band was just lazy.

Try harder. And Weirdly had, like, two videos, too, from what I recall.

Oh. Like, there was sort of the main video, and then one where it was just, like, a bathtub filling with water, with the other video, like, playing on a tile.

That's right. Yeah, that's the one I'm familiar with. that's the one i'm familiar with yeah i'm not really sure what that's all about but yeah that that album was all over the place but it's justlike a wild album that the cover art is is great, um you know you mentioned like a wizard hat off the top it had like the wizard on the back saying paving his rad yes um yeah some iremember like the liner notes were like all scribbly and i.

[24:58] Probably is like Papin working as blue as they ever did in some of the liner notes or some of the, which I don't want to repeat because I don't know who had clipped the sound, butsome like rudeness in there.

But yeah, what an album. And again, I, I, I definitely remember getting that album in high school before I really had sort of the broader context of this whole indie rock thing and justbeing like, what is this?

It's very different from anything that was going on at the time for sure.

Yeah, totally. Totally. And around the same time too, like I also got, um, at least one of the silver Jews albums.

[25:33] Ah, like really early because again, I knew that, uh, Nisanovic and Malchus were on at, uh, not American water, the twilight, twilight Walker, I think was the name of the album.Starlight Walker.

[25:46] Starlight Walker. Right. Yeah. Uh, yeah. Which was like great.

[25:51] And like, you know, was, was not, not a huge stretch if you're into pavement and certainly if you're into wowie zowie gang into that album was fairly easy and but that's sort of aregret too i was supposed to go see the purple mountains or like david berman and was obviously canceled when he decided to uh check out a couple years ago and i'd say that's probablyalso my number one concert regret the one and only time the silver juice played in toronto um i think it was like 2009 um i forgot.

[26:24] Out which album the lookout c lookout look i'm gonna look at c yeah yeah i feel like maybe it's maybe that album uh i should have gone i don't know i feel like i was just like in agap in my silver jews listening and now that's the mr burman's with us there's clips of it on youtube so yeah i've enjoyed those yeah yeah well tragic what what a talent oh man yeahabsolutely um um love love him and uh if you're listening to this and and you enjoy this maybe you'll enjoy the berman project which is another podcast i do so uh if you're out therelistening i didn't even know check out the berman project yeah we're gonna plug yes yeah well to appeal to your to appeal to your top 40 sensibility we have you kicking off the top 40 thisis track number 40 coming up should we uh go to it yeah absolutely all right we'll take a quick break and we'll be right back after this with track number 40 hey.

Track 5:

[27:25] This is bob nastanovich from pavement thanks for listening and now on with a countdown 40.

Track 2:

[30:41] So track number 40, Starlings of the Slipstream, is the 11th track on BTC and the fourth song on the countdown from Bright in the Corner so far behind Blue Hawaiian at 50,number 44, Embassy Row, and of course at 43, which we just heard a couple weeks ago, was Old to Begin.

So Cam from Toronto, what do you think of Starlings of the Slipstream? this.

Track 4:

[31:10] Is a great little song i love i love this song just as a standalone item i love this song going right into the song finn to wrap up that album yeah um but those might actually be my twofavorite songs on on right in the corners like what a what a great one to punch to close things that finn is probably actually my favorite song on that album but yeah i i think starlings andin the slipstream is is a great song it's a great pavement song but i do also feel like it would not be out of place on that first season of miss solo album i think it's a good part i think it's agood harbinger of things to come because it's it's really well produced it's really well played.

[31:57] Um and it kind of has that same like languid breezy almost like california it's not really a california song but i don't know i could just sort of hear it on that first mouth that soloalbum alongside um like the latter half of that album with like trojan curfew and deto and those sort of more you know mid-tempo songs um it's a great little song it's really short thoughlike how long is it it's like two minutes or so yeah two two i don't have it in front of me but like i want to say 220 or something like that it's it's uh it's a short it's a short um song with withsparse verses. Um, yeah, you know it's um i love the tone of sm's voice in this song like he he's he's using a really nice version of his voice like it really is a lovely a lovely song yeah imean i i think a lot of his best songs and again this is not an original thought but just sounds so effortless yes just even some of the lyrics in this song like you know i'm sure i'm sure hewrote them on the back of a napkin and they're even like you know the the 10th best verse in this is probably more creative than anything i've ever done in my entire life um like i think ofthat.

[33:20] Darlings on the split screen and yes like just that little word play in there and i i know you mentioned this when you talked about the song before but you know in terms of like i sortof, jokingly alluded to the liner notes of Wowie Zowie Not things that have been aged well, Darlings on the split screen I think when you talked about this song before on the podcast yousort of referenced Revenge of the Nerds That's what it reminds me of Porkies, I feel like there's like a spy cam in a sorority, but just what are just like lyricists but.

[33:58] That whole album I find interesting because i don't find it like a very high energy album but no it does feel like a very late 90s album like bridging this you know functionally thegrunge era was dead but we weren't into kind of the 2000s with like the strokes and interpol and those bands so i find albums of this of this era from like indie rock or a lot of british stuffyou know i think of like spiritualize or the verve urban hymns are really interesting because it was a bit of a no man's or no person's land i feel like if you're into indie rock and alternativein that time because we're also like right on the precipice of like the boy band britney spears era and also like the new the new metal era yeah so an album like right in the corners comeson 1997 um you know i feel like a a lot of alternative band, the air works are having an identity crisis.

Um, that album, I think of it in the same terms when I think of that blur self-titled album, um, where Damon Albarn was in rain pox. And especially we're saying how influenced they wereby pavement.

Right. That's the one with song two on it. Right. That's right.

Yeah. And like beetle bum and stuff.

Right. Right. Um, yeah, it's a really interesting time in music, but I don't know, like, I feel like right in the corners I didn't think about for years, but.

[35:25] It's my favorite. Yeah, the longer I sit with this band, it's like, that's really a kick-ass album.

And even the singles were great.

It's definitely a more refined pavement and I think it's a superior album to Terror Twilight, but just smoothed out every rough edge that came with Wowie Zowie.

[35:46] It's almost weird in hindsight that a song like Shady Lane wasn't a big radio hit.

I mean, it's not a difficult song to get into.

[35:55] Agree at all but there's you know there's there's tons of great songs and some also some good b-sides of that including i think this is where uh harness was harness your hopes was ithink that was a carrot rope b-side or it is oh shit or was it like a shady lane b-side i forget it was definitely one of these albums i could look it up but you know i am uncool andunderqualified qualified and i often just wing it um but that one i do not know i do not know the answer if you're listening to this and you're screaming at your uh device right now send mean email jd at medium alchemist.com and let me know what uh where harness your hopes comes from i'm yeah but it is definitely it's a an ep yeah and i want to say it's i want to say it'smajor leaks but i might be wrong yes oh you i think you might be right i feel like it actually it is a terror or twilight era b-side um but yeah sir starlings is 15 you know it's it's a great song idon't know i i feel i definitely feel like it's an overlooked song in their catalog for sure as far as malcolm as lyrics go as well like i think that first verse is is narratively cohesive right likeso So I've done some further research than I did for the prior episode, and I learned what a slipstream actually is.

[37:21] And it is like, uh, I've got it written down here. Um.

[37:26] A slipstream is the area behind a jet or any moving object.

So it's like how race cars can do drifting and things like that.

So the slipstream will often catch birds and suck them toward the plane in the engines.

And so the starlings of the slipstream, I heard what you said.

The leaders are dead. They're robbing the skies and I can hear their followers cry.

Fry so to me that's like fairly straightforward as far as malchemist goes because he's usually word salad right like it's it's beautiful the way he does it but it's like you said it's effortless.

[38:07] And uh and i was gonna say what do we know about actual starlings are they like a migratory bird i'm just are they getting like sucked up in the slipstream en masse um becausethey're they're they're pretty big for like a i don't know if they qualify as like a songbird but they're bigger than like a sparrow for sure that's right yeah they're kind of like a grackle sizewow i did not realize i had a bird expert yeah no i was pretty well again before baseball and before indie rockers they were like really into animals as a kid and it's i have a lot of latentknowledge of like birds and amphibians and man that's great yeah also i don't know if you remember i don't know know if you're from canada originally there was a uh i shouldn't sayfailed there was just like a can con band called starling i don't remember them from the late 90s early 2000s i want to say they were from ottawa um and i feel like they got sort of a majorlabor push for like one album i remember seeing them in the cutout bins in and around toronto uh not not long after bright in the corners came out starling was was getting a bit of a pushwow yeah very cool fun fact yeah.

[39:24] Fun fact you can't help but drop the lexicon in i know i know if you're not if you're listening to this and you wonder where a lot of this language is coming from shout out ridleyfuneral home and uh fun fact there's a particular episode you should listen to of toronto mic'd and it is uh an episode all about lexicon and cam is on it and the vp of sales is on it uh tylerand of course mike is on it and it's uh it's a great addendum to the podcast as i mentioned i've been on the toronto mike podcast many many times over the years and pavement does comeup every every once in a while, but Mike's knowledge of pavement has just, he heard cut your hair on the radio a few times.

[40:13] And even that, I don't know, like I feel like in Canada that did not really, get spins the only time i recall hearing it on the radio was uh kind of club 102 nights it would get played inthe opening hour when you might hear some more uh eclectic stuff that's skirax yeah like i remember hearing cut your hair and and um like the band adorable like how almost like thethird tier british stuff the new fast automatic daffodils or whatever that band the new fads right um adorable homeboy maybe a little ned's atomic dustbin or the boo radley's uh every oncein a while you hear a paving for a pixies track but not not really dance music no cut cut your hair i don't think and certainly starlings of the slip screen definitely not no um dance music atall so was this was this album always your favorites um no i went there twilight was your entry point yeah that was my entry point and then the steve solo record and then i went andcompleted the catalog first one i got was.

[41:20] Crooked rain and fell in love with crooked rain and then i just bought everything and uh just through listening that was part of the medium alchemist idea the concept behind it wasme listening to every track so that i could you know get a better sense of why they were so awesome and like why was it that i liked them i i couldn't ever really put my finger on it so ithought well i'll just go through every track and and see very cool and that's what i did yeah yeah i don't know like i i got i don't know if you've talked about his first solo album much but ii fucking love that album i i think it is really underrated yeah yes um to me it feels like a person reborn where you know there's the old adage if you're a band you know you have yourwhole life to write your first album and you have six months to write your second album or whatever it is.

I just felt like all those songs Malikmas had been sitting on, I could be wrong. You're the actor, so maybe you know this for a fact.

But I feel like those songs you're probably sitting on for quite a while.

But they just, for whatever reason, they didn't feel like pavement songs.

[42:34] Because they just seem so fully formed and both familiar yet a new thing when it came out.

Totally. Even that album cover is like, what is he doing?

He's on the beach. He looks all breezy. His hair is different. print uh he almost looked like a sort of a mad night idol he's never been more sort of dashing than he is on that album cover umbut it's great i'm trying to remember when did that come out as a 2003 2001 is it 2000 wow okay wild is it 2001 or yeah i'm pretty sure it's yeah i think you're right yeah it wasn't fouryears between that and terror twilight certainly so yeah i think you're right and on the terror twilight box set there's a couple uh sm demos that like he was demoing for pavement but likeyou said must have just been like this doesn't feel right and sat on them and then they show up you know two years later three years later on the record yeah well it was interesting to seewhen he started bridging out even you know in the last few years of pavement during their first iteration um i remember having the soundtrack to the movie suburbia the richard linklettermovie where the first song was elastica featuring.

[43:54] Stephen malchmas doing a cover of the x song the unheard music have you ever heard this song no i'm not yeah that that's worth digging up it's not i i definitely know it's not onspotify um that's one of the great i wouldn't say it's like a lost soundtrack i think people know about that soundtrack but that's a really cool cover in my opinion and i don't know if you youget with elastica magic the second time we're talking about elastica weirdly maybe they met they probably met on the lull blizzard well he was dating the singer of elastica for a while oror something along those lines there was some intrigue was dating uh justine freishman from it did Did Malthus date her, too?

Is that true? I think there was some sort of dalliance at some point, yeah. Okay.

I don't know. We might need to get Robert Lawson in. I'm not sure about that.

But regardless, maybe it's on YouTube, but that's definitely worth digging up in terms of an early Malthus external foray outside of Pavement that I think is a very cool song that we don'thear anymore.

More that that album or that soundtrack also has the first version i think it was before.

[45:09] A thousand leaves came out the song sunday by sonic youth that was the first time it appeared was on that um and beck's on there and super chunk and i believe the bipolar surf orsome previous i think it's all like previously released stuff mainly that was a combination like besides and other stuff um but definitely worth digging up because i don't think that albumfor sure act is on uh spotify but that.

[45:31] That covers great and i feel like it's weirdly been lost history because i don't consider it for steven moccas nor elastica particularly obscure obscure in this day and age but that thatsong's just uh falling through the cracks oh man well cam it has been absolutely wonderful picking your brain here about pavement and music in general uh you've got a real greatknowledge of things and you're right in my wheelhouse age wise as well i'm going to be 50 this year but um but very similar vibes so i i get you know a lot lot of what you're putting downis there anywhere that uh you live in the online realm that you want to share with people or is there any projects you're working on that you want to share or anything like that yeah i meanpeople can follow my or take a look at my music blog.

[46:22] Completely completely ignored.com um i used to call it sort of think nate silver but for music is how i describe it but now i feel like nate silver is like half canceled so i'm gonnaneed a new analogy for this but think of it like fun musical info infographics cross maybe like money ball crossed with indie rock oh that's very cool yeah it's all about sort of usingnumbers and and graphics and visuals to tell little fun facts and anecdotes about music a lot of stuff like things like ticket prices and like stream counts on spotify and fake posters likethere's a lot of like fake Coachella posters on there of like, you know.

[47:10] CanConChella was probably my biggest viral hit from that blog. That was you?

Yeah, that was me. Oh, that's fabulous.

[47:20] Yeah, yeah. So that was a big hit with Alan Cross and sort of the Indie88 crowd.

But again, it was a bit of a one-hit wonder, much like Cut Your Hair With Pavement.

There's been a few viral hits from that blog, but yeah completelyignored.com if you want to check it out there's all sorts of stuff on there that uh probably if you're listening to this so youwouldn't be totally offended by what's on there there's some fun stuff cool well i'm going to check it out right after this cool thanks again for coming in and thanks for putting up with mytechnical difficulties that was great um that's what i've got for you this week everybody next week we'll be here with track number 39 and we'll we'll do this all again.

Thanks Cam. Awesome, thanks for having me. Wash your goddamn hands.

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